Top 5 Famous Sci-Fi Aliens You Can Play in Spore's Virtual World

As the best video game in 4.5 billion years finally launches this weekend, PM's resident geek crawls the best of Spore Creature Creator for the handful of otherworldly invaders, from Predator to the bloodsuckers of H.G. Wells, that will bring the customized gameplay back into this world.

Spore is finally, almost, upon us. We had a chance to play the full version at this year's E3, but on Sunday, players around the world will discover what happens when a game of epic scope and unparalleled ambition actually lives up to years of hype. Most players will be content to create a spastic race of brightly colored Muppets, or a more random, dog's breakfast of spiny bits and oddly placed eye-stalks, and dutifully grind through the various stages of the game.

But the brilliance of Spore is that it's precisely as nerdy--and as villainous--as you are, with customization features that let you recreate some of the greatest alien invasions in science fiction. We found the amazing user-generated designs that follow at the Sporepedia, a Web site where gamers can upload the monsters they've created in the game, and download millions of others. The forces of nerddom have come up with some impressive animals since the Spore Creature Creator debuted in mid-June: The genius of the Sporepedia is that any Spore player can download and play with any other Spore-dork's uploaded contribution.

Some of the invading villains on the Sporepedia work better than others--the lizard-men from V, for example, are nothing without their human disguises and giant 80's hairdos. We've ranked the five conquering Spore species that should be devastating whole galaxies from day one.

5. Martians (from War of the Worlds)

The villains of H.G. Wells' novel are a pathetic bunch of leathery, listless, tentacled bloodsuckers. That is, until they crawl into their towering tripod tanks and devastate Great Britain with heat rays and chemical weapons. In a Martian Spore campaign, the challenge will be to find a way for these war-like, but relatively feeble creatures survive long enough to begin forging their own mechanized destiny.

According to Darren Montgomery, Electronic Arts' Sr. Product Manager for Spore, outright aggression is one of the hardest ways to win the game. It's even more difficult when your species has no natural weapons. So far, most of the War of the Worlds-related Creatures in the Sporepedia have been either painstaking organic recreations of various tripod designs, or attempts at the creatures from the Spielberg movie. We hope the Spore community, which has already shown incredible ingenuity, can show old H.G. a little respect, and do justice to the nasty little Martian beast that started it all. The tripod-building can wait for the full game's customizable vehicles.

4. Xenomorphs (from the Alien Quadrilogy)

The full, horrible lifecycle of this unnamed, unstoppable species, from facehugger to chestburster to egg-laying queen, isn't supported by Spore, which focuses on a single species at a time. But if you're willing to stomach a brief Aliens-inspired campaign that stays within the bounds of a single planet, it will all be worth it for the view of an entire planet teeming with warrior aliens (which seem to be populating the Sporepedia faster than any other sci-fi homage).

3. Arachnids (from Starship Troopers)

Forget the ultra-violence and the thinly-veiled commentary on humanity's fascist urges--the most memorable part of Starship Troopers is the bugs, and Spore gives fans of the cult classic the opportunity to pick up where Arachnids left off.

In the movie, the giant spider-like monsters were part of an insect alliance--with some careful vehicle editing, planes become massive mosquitos, and tanks look like fire or plasma-spewing bugs. For an even more disturbing experience, players can build a race of highly sociable, maggot-like brain bugs (the officers of the movie's insect army). After all, what's the difference between charming other species into cooperation, and sucking out their delicious brains for information?

2. Predators (from Predator)

None of the user-generated designs for Predator's predators are completely on the money yet, but these mandibled thrill-killing reptiles are a perfect fit for Spore. The bad news: The game doesn't really allow for hunting expeditions, and the governor of California isn't likely to show up in future updates. But tracking this race from single-cell predation to all-out galactic war seems too good to pass up. And since the movies that have featured the predators, including certain Alien-related ones that we'll pretend never happened, have only barely filled in the gaps in this race's culture, players are free to give predators a better chance at survival by making them not entirely competitive. Do predators have a religion? Do they peacefully coexist with certain advanced species, and only prey on the stupid ones, or the ones they actually respect? These are all terribly dorky questions, which is why they need answering.

1. Cthulhu Mythos (from the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft)

Despite almost universally bad movie adaptations, the alien mythology created by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft has been a fan favorite for decades. Of all the videogames that have tried to capture the nightmarish scope of an eons-spanning invasion from the stars, Spore might provide the best homage to Lovecraft's legacy. The Cthulhu mythos (named after the most apocalyptic of a pantheon of alien gods that appeared throughout Lovecraft's stories) is a treasure trove of disturbing creatures, many of which are already in the Sporepedia.

The most appropriate path to galactic majesty depends on which race the player picks: The Star Spawn of Cthulhu are essentially Godzilla with wings and tentacled-mouths, while the Mi-Go, a race of insect-like intelligent fungi, can go the "social" route, by psychically overpowering their victims. Lovecraft's universe is full of malicious cosmic dieties, giving players the option to try to convert whole planets to the dread faith of Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, or any number of impossible-to-spell gods.

If you get bored of unspeakable evil, the most interesting Lovecraftian campaign might be to play as the Elder Things. With their starfish heads, bat-like wings and radial symmetry (meaning, they have no front, back, or sides, but rather a set of five organs arrayed in and around their cylindrical torsos) these intriguingly hideous beings are an open challenge to the best Creature designers. From a narrative point of view, they're Lovecraft's most heroic creation, a highly advanced space-faring race that stood up to the encroachment of Cthulhu and the Mi-go, at least for a while. And if none of that makes any sense, then we are officially nerdier than you are.